"Nettles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... put the definition to the test. "The story goes," he would say, quoting Mrs. Clark Nuttall's admirable work, Wild Flowers as They Grow, "that the Roman soldiers brought the most venomous of the stinging nettles to England to flagellate themselves with when they were benumbed with the cold of this—to them—terribly inclement isle. It is certain," he would add from the same source, "that physicians at one time employed ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... turned and went running back. The sun shone steadily; sheaves picked up by the labourer made his hands smell oily, their string band raised a blister on his forefinger. Very often he grabbed hold of nettles and sharp thistles, and the backs of his hands were swollen and covered with stings. Blue butterflies twirled in front of his face, pale moths flew out. When his hat fell off he had no time to get it. The sweat ran down his egg-shaped forehead to his long, square, hairy chin (though he could ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... poured forth in intolerable clouds; but we submitted, powerless to protest. Alexandra, with all her clothes on, seemed not to feel the heat. She administered a merciless yet gentle massage to every limb with her birch rods,—what would it have been like if she had used nettles, the peasants' delight?—and rescued us from utter collapse just in time by a douche of ice-cold water. We huddled on all the warm clothing we owned, were driven home, plied with boiling tea, and put to bed for two hours. At the end of that time we felt made over, physically, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... their fellow-creatures beyond that of a cheap and merely external curiosity. If they heard a man's name and business, they seemed to think they had the heart of that mystery; but they were as eager to know that much as they were indifferent to the rest. Some of them were on nettles till they learned your name was Dickson and you a journeyman baker; but beyond that, whether you were Catholic or Mormon, dull or clever, fierce or friendly, was all one to them. Others who were not so stupid, gossiped a little, and, I am bound to say, unkindly. A favourite witticism was for ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now to rest ourselves from seriousness with more din and devil-noises. And after that we shall lead the man-boy Andramark to the Lodge of Nettles, there to sit alone for a space and to turn over in his mind all that ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of malice, Mr. Fox sought to give general annoyance, by a polite insolence toward the others, which they with difficulty ignored, and a lover-like gallantry toward Edith, which was like nettles to Gus, and nauseating to her; but she did not dare resent it. He could at least torment her ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... for the air of the parks. St. George's Fields is convenient for its contiguity to the Bench. Chuse! But are you really coming to town? The hope of it has entirely disarmed my petty disappointment of its nettles. Yet I rejoice so much on my own account, that I fear I do not feel enough pure satisfaction on yours. Why, surely, the joint editorship of the Chron: must be a very comfortable & secure living for a man. But should not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... window and exclaimed, "Lord, how good it is to think of lanes, muddy lanes, with brambles and nettles, you know, and real grass fields, and farmyards with pigs and cows, and men walking beside carts with pitchforks—there's nothing to compare with that here—look at the stony red earth, and the bright blue sea, and the glaring white houses—how ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... safer stable' than many others in his time. The fort[162], with an inscription on it, Maria Re 1564, is strongly built. Dr. Johnson examined it with much attention. He stalked like a giant among the luxuriant thistles and nettles. There are three wells in the island; but we could not find one in the fort. There must probably have been one, though now filled up, as a garrison could not subsist without it. But I have dwelt too long on this little ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... off to the one unkempt corner of Mr. Battershall's garden, where in the shadow of a stone dovecot, ruinated and long disused, a rustic bench stood deep in nettles. On this she perched herself, and sat with legs dangling while she discoursed with Timothy of ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... these many flowers and shrubs could be grown in our climate, some mentioned, such as nettles, burdocks, plantains and other weeds, would be entirely out of place in a garden, soon overrunning it. It must be remembered, too, that in Shakespeare's time herbs and wild flowers were cultivated in most gardens, that many ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... commonalty that may be seen whenever we choose, painted properly; but all of lovely and wonderful, which we cannot see but at rare intervals, painted vilely: the castles of the Rhine and Rhone made vignettes of for the annuals; and the nettles and mushrooms, which were prepared by Nature eminently for nettle porridge and fish sauce, immortalized by art as reverently as if we were Egyptians, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... dismal dell—no sunlight penetrated its dark recesses, overgrown with vegetation, overshadowed by dark pines, filled with nettles and brambles. Herein dwelt one of those wretched women supposed to hold special communion with Satan by the credulous peasantry, and whose natural death was the stake. But often they were spared a ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... on the wonderful brook, along the bank of which the procession marched. Now let the Reader picture to himself this interminable multitude advancing in the beautiful green woods, all amidst lilies-of-the-valley, violets and buttercups, lettuce-leaves, nettles, and ferns, marching over hill and dale, in a sparkling sunshine, and with a blue sky overhead,—and withal the toil and efforts of the little wights, the creaking of wheels, the cracking of whips, the word of command resounding through the ranks, the music and singing when the ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... with the flaunting willow-herb, or fire-weed? But such incongruities are not confined to the "vegetable kingdom." The wood-nettle was growing everywhere; a juicy-looking but coarse weed, resembling our common roadside nettles only in its blossoms. The cattle had found out what I never should have surmised,—having had a taste of its sting,—that it is good for food; there were great patches of it, as likewise of the pale touch-me-not (Impatiens ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... hot as we paced along the line of spray, our horses' feet sinking above the fetlocks in pink and purple shells, while the droll sea-crabs scampered away from our path, and the blue gelatinous sea-nettles were tossed before us by the surge. Our view was confined to the sand-hills—sometimes covered with a flood of scarlet poppies—on one hand; and to the blue, surf-fringed sea on the other. The terrible coast was still lined with wrecks, and just ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... may, there will settle for ever the shadow of the world's dishonour; it will be for ever poisoned, and cursed, and embittered by the scorn of fools, and the reproach of women, since by you they have been given their lashes of nettles, and by you have been given their by-word to hoot. She will walk in the light of triumph, you say, and therefore you have not hurt her; do you not see that the fiercer that light may beat on her, the sharper will the eyes of the world search out the brand with which you have burned her. For ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... life. And I am sure this is the next way to do it; namely, to be slothful; slothful, I say, in the work of salvation. The vineyard of the slothful man, in reference to the things of this life, is not fuller of briars, nettles, and stinking weeds, than he that is slothful for heaven, hath his heart full of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... plateau, which looked extremely likely, and where I even saw traces of them. My dog commenced to work, and I followed him into the light, dry, crackling grass, but suddenly became conscious of a smarting in the legs as though walking through nettles, and noticed that the grass was adhering to my stockings. However, I pushed on, my dog being hot on the scent, but presently we both came to a standstill—I, because of cramp in both legs, each of which was now enveloped in grass to ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... seed, she commenced to force, little by little, up my anus. The merciless old virago then anointed the insides of my thighs with the same decoction; finally mixing nasturtium juice with elixir of southern wood, she gave my genitals a bath and, picking up a bunch of green nettles, she commenced to strike me gently all over my belly below the navel. {The nettles stung me horribly and I suddenly took to my heels, with the old hags in full pursuit.} Although they were befuddled with wine and lust they followed the right road and chased ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... nettles there was small chance of repose for the governor. Some of the rumours were even more stinging. So incomprehensible did it seem that the proud sovereign of England should send over her subjects to starve or beg in the streets of Flushing and Ostend, that it was darkly intimated that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... away, cutting off the heads of the nettles with his cane as he went; and Madame walked forth into the open space among the graves, where I might have seen her, had I stood up, looking with the absorbed gaze of ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... signify, if it all grows up to nettles!" said Elizabeth. "Will you take the money of me and let me take ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... useful and manifold purposes, the Gulf Stream would seem to be one of the great purveyors of food to the whales. Sea-nettles, or medusae, are well known to constitute the principal food of that species of whale which is termed the right whale. Navigators have frequently observed large quantities of these medusae floating along ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... been carried away captives in accordance with the cruel policy of the great Eastern despotisms, which had so much to do with weakening them by their very conquests. The land had lain desolate and uncultivated for many years, savage beasts had increased in the untilled solitudes, even as weeds and nettles grew in the gardens and vineyards of Samaria. At last the king of Assyria resolved to people the country; and for this purpose he sent a mixed multitude from the different nationalities of his empire to the land of Israel. They were men of five nationalities, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... clock (a birthday present) struck five, Gwendolen French sprang out of bed and plunged her face into the clump of nettles which grew outside her lattice window. For some minutes she stood there, breathing in the incense of the day; then dressing quickly she went down into the great oak-beamed kitchen to prepare breakfast for her father and the pigs. As she went about her ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... pruriens), the pods of which are covered with what looks a fine velvety down, but is in reality a multitude of fine prickles, which go in by the million, and caused an itching and stinging in the naked bodies of those who were pulling the tow-rope, that made them wriggle as if stung by a whole bed of nettles. Those on board required to be men of ready resource with oars and punting-poles, and such they were. But, nevertheless, they found, after attempting to pass by a rock, round which the water rushed in whirls, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... through this exordium as if he sat on nettles, but wisely held his tongue, while the brazen-faced proprietor leaned carelessly over, and whispered to his counsel. Phipps, on his distant seat, grew white around the lips, and felt that he was on the verge of the most ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... away the game," he said in a shaking voice to Philip, trying not to look at Vassenka, "and cover them with some nettles. And you might at least ask for some ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... a nest of weeds and nettles Lay a violet, half-hidden, Hoping that his glance unbidden Yet might fall upon her petals. Though she lived alone, apart, Hope lay nestling at her heart, But, alas, the cruel awaking Set her little heart a-breaking, For he ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... was quiet that night he stole to the bedchamber where the girl was lying asleep, threw a great robe over her head to stifle her cries, and carried her off. She fainted away from fright and the Blackamoor thinking her dead tossed her into a field of nettles in the outskirts of ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... timidity in his pose as he listens for an answer to his knock. The nails and bolts of the door are rusted; it is overgrown with ivy and the tall stalks and flat umbels of fennel. The sill is choked with nettles and other weeds, emblems all of the long sleep of the world which Christ comes to break. The full moon makes a halo behind his head and shines through the low boughs of an orchard, whose apples strew the dark grass in the foreground, sown with ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... shouldst pay the forfeit high, But well I know her sinless mind Is pure as the angel forms above, Gentle and meek and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love. Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment Tied to the hornet's shardy wings, Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings, Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, Your jailer a spider huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies to lie Of the worm, and the bug and the murdered ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... heart gave a throb, for, instead of being neat and well stocked as of old, everything appeared to have been neglected—creepers had run wild, the apple and pear trees were covered with long shoots, and tall thistles and nettles stood in clumps. ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... momentary pause in his jocular way). Remember, Mr. Secretary of War, you are now in the old chair of Floyd and Davis: and sit thee down as if on nettles. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... they affirm that even that savage creature, who may unwarily leap into it, will find itself trapped in a way from which there is no escape. Then there was the cactus with spikes three inches in length, and the "Come and I'll kiss you," a bush armed with almost equally formidable thorns, and huge nettles, and numerous other vegetable productions, offering impracticable impediments to the progress, not only of human beings, but of every species of animal, with the exception of elephants and rhinoceroses, which might attempt to ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... intimate acquaintance with the sea-wrack, crabs, sea-nettles, jelly-fish, and the thousand and one other small creatures that inhabit the ocean, dates from this visit to ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Yes; and if he look a six miles to the right, there is the smoke of the evening kettles from Zorndorf, rising into the sky; and across the River, a twenty miles to the left, is Kunersdorf: poor sleepy sandy hamlets; where nettles of the Devil are ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... may scatter Its nettles on thy tomb, And even Christian bosoms Deny thy memory room; For lying lips shall torture Thy mercy into crime, And the slanderer shall flourish As the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... charmer, whosoe'er it be, Unbid to his sweet arms—so, gracious Pan, May ne'er thy ribs and shoulderblades be lashed With squills by young Arcadians, whensoe'er They are scant of supper! But should this my prayer Mislike thee, then on nettles mayest thou sleep, Dinted and sore all over from their claws! Then mayest thou lodge amid Edonian hills By Hebrus, in midwinter; there subsist, The Bear thy neighbour: and, in summer, range With the far AEthiops 'neath the Blemmyan rocks Where Nile is no more seen! ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... with colewort, with leaves of the vine-tree, with mallows, wool-blade, which is a tail-scarlet, with lettuce, and with spinach leaves. All this did very great good to my leg. Then with mercury, with parsley, with nettles, with comfrey, but that gave me the bloody flux of Lombardy, which I healed by wiping me with my braguette. Then I wiped my tail in the sheets, in the coverlet, in the curtains, with a cushion, with arras hangings, with a green carpet, with a table-cloth, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of seasons, of recipes, flowers and vegetables, of the gardener's pleasure in digging his fields in spring, clearing them of nettles, and levelling the ground thrown up by the moles, in protecting his seedlings from rain and sun, and, later on, in his ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... right to rust; he is bound to keep his tools bright by usage. No man has a right to be paralyzed; he is bound to enlarge and grow. So ideals come in to compel men to go forward. It is easier to lie down in a thorn hedge, or to sleep in a field of stinging nettles, than for a man to abide contentedly as he is while his ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... sank the first line again, so suddenly that an onlooker might have thought that everyone of them had been shot, and as Dennis found himself in a bed of stinging nettles close to the ruins of a cottage, with the corporal and the commandant on either side of him, he caught the distant sound of an English yell away to the left, and knew that the British raid had been well timed, and was acting in concert with ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... but the nettles or thorns of satire, which grow most naturally in the worst earth; and therefore almost all poets, except those who were not able to eat bread without the bounty of great men, that is, without what they ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... please," said the Captain imploringly; "you'll be sorry for it if you do. The ground is full of rabbit-burrows, and there are a lot of nettles about." ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... shall all be in the ditch presently,' said Bessie. 'Never mind. It's only a dry bed of dock and used-up stinging nettles. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Razumov too. He lived, not "in the centre," but "in the south." She described to me a little two-roomed wooden house, in the suburb of some very small town, hiding within the high plank-fence of a yard overgrown with nettles. He was crippled, ill, getting weaker every day, and Tekla the Samaritan tended him unweariedly with the pure joy of unselfish devotion. There was nothing in that task to ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... that thy question, and go rot! Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled, To appoint myself in this vexation; sully The purity and whiteness of my sheets,— Which to preserve is sleep; which being spotted Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps; Give scandal to the blood o' the prince, my son,— Who I do think is mine, and love as mine,— Without ripe moving to't?—Would I do this? ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... produced a score of lines in which some old idea, as worn out as the Wandering Jew, and vilely clad in rags cribbed from the literary dust heap, danced clumsily on the tight rope of paradox. On reading through these lines Rodolphe was as bewildered as a man who sees nettles spring up in a bed in which he thought he had planted roses. He would then tear up the paper, on which he had just scattered this chaplet of absurdities, and trample it under foot ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... that a few years ago, in the state of Tennessee, "Two human bodies were found in a copperas cave in a surprising state of preservation. They were first wrapped up in a kind of blanket, supposed to have been manufactured of the lint of nettles, afterwards with dressed skins, and then a mat of ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... my stay, after mate had been served and there was a long vacant interval before night, she would go out from the gate to a distance of fifty or sixty yards, where an old log was lying on a piece of waste ground overgrown with nettles, burdock, and redweed, now dead and brown, and sitting on the log, her chin resting on her hand, she would fix her eyes on the dusty road half a mile away, and motionless in that dejected attitude she would remain for about an hour. When you ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... the seed of most valiant-wombed grand-mothers, scions of savage and dangerous nettles! Prepare for the battle, all. Gird up your angers. Our way the ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... next day I came provided with six large candles of my own making (for I made very good candles now of goats' tallow, but was hard set for candle-wick, using sometimes rags or rope-yarn, and sometimes the dried rind of a weed like nettles;) and going into this low place, I was obliged to creep upon all fours, as I have said, almost ten yards; which, by the way, I thought was a venture bold enough, considering that I knew not how far it might go, nor what was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... down by the fire opposite to his wife, and remains there pensive: marriage appears to him like an immense dreary plain, with its crop of nettles and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... stumbled a bit on landing, which made an excuse. But this time the horse, who was not so fresh now, waited for him to get up again. He felt very stiff and sore when it was all over and they were riding home again; especially it seemed as if his lower garments were stuffed with nettles. As for his tumbles, the ground was very soft, and he had not been kicked or trodden on, so that when he had had a warm bath he was as right as ninepence, ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... settin' at a window in de house one night and somebody crept up dere and fill his head full of buck-shot. Marster Starke was Miss Sallie's husband, and Miss Mattie and Miss May's papa. Oh, de misery of dat night to my white folks! Who did it? God knows! They sent poor Henry Nettles to de penitentiary for it, but most white folks and all de colored didn't believe he done it. White folks say a white man done it, but our color know it was de work of ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... head between his hands a lookin' like grim death, if I ever see it. My heart plum stopped. Says I, 'she's a failure! She's a bustin' the boy's heart! I'll go straight over and tell her so.' I didn't dare bespeak him, but I was on nettles all night. I jest laid a-studyin' and a-studyin', and I says, 'Come mornin' I'll go straight and give her a curry-combin' that'll do her good.' And I started a-feelin' pretty grim, and here you came to meet ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... impossible, absolutely unscientific, for a bad person to be truly happy; just as impossible as it would be for one to be comfortable while lying on a bed of nettles which are constantly pricking him. There is no way under heaven by which a person can be really happy without being good, clean, square, and true. This does not mean that a person is happy because he does not use tobacco, drink, gamble, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... far as man could obey. But ere the agony were full over, God Almighty stepped in, and bare him away from what she would have had him suffer. When they put him on the hurdle, he lay as though he wist not; when they twined a crown of nettles and pressed it on his brow, he was as though he felt not; when, the torture over, they made ready to drag him to the gallows, they saw that he was dead. God cried ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... and switch, and retraced his steps towards Overcombe Mill, knocking down the brambles and nettles as he went with gloomy and indifferent blows. When he got within sight of the house he ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... will never grow stiff with fatigue. I will brave everything with my dear allies, on whom Nature has lavished virtue, grace, boldness, cleverness, and whose wisely directed energy is going to save the State. Oh! my good, gallant Lysistrata, and all my friends, be ever like a bundle of nettles; never let your anger slacken; the winds of fortune blow ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... chair, and stretching his legs comfortably as one does by one's own fireside; "you see, my dear Tom, that men like us—young, single, not on the whole bad-looking as men go—can find sweethearts in plenty. If one does not like us, another will; sweethearts are sown everywhere like nettles and thistles. But the rarest thing in life is a friend. Now, tell me frankly, in the course of your wanderings did you ever come into a village where you could not have got a sweetheart if you had asked for one; and if, having got a sweetheart, you had lost her, do you think you would have ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... parcel there was no misgiving in my heart,—nothing but harping and singing, and blessings on the river that seemed all silver with the backs of magic trout. As I thought of all I owed that noble fish, I kneeled by the river's bearded lip, among the nettles and the meadowsweet, and swore by the inconstant moon that trout and I were henceforth kinsmen, and that between our houses should be an eternal amity. The chub and the dace and the carp, not to speak of that Chinese pirate the pike, might still look to ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... fallen so suddenly around me. Instead of the veil of merciful blackness which had hidden everything hitherto from view, a gray light spread slowly over the objects around, revealing a burial-ground, with an old church standing in the midst—a burial-ground where grew rank nettles and coarse, tall grass; where brambles trailed over the graves, and weeds and decay consorted with ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... great haste to develop its seed; it foregoes its tall stalk and wide flaunting growth, and turns all its energies into keeping up the succession of the species. Certain fields under the plow are always infested with "blind nettles," others with wild buckwheat, black bindweed, or cockle. The seed lies dormant under the sward, the warmth and the moisture affect it not ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... house that he brought great news, Mademoiselle would soon sally forth to learn what that news might be. In this conjecture Ormond was not mistaken. He soon heard her voice "Mon-Dieu!-ing" at the top of the bank: he ducked—he dived—he darted through nettles and brambles, and escaped. Seen or unseen he escaped, nor stopped his flight even when out of reach of the danger. As to trusting himself to meet Dora's eyes, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... right across it, were it not for pot-holes here and there—ten-feet traps—and great beds of rotten coral, into which one would sink as into brushwood, to say nothing of the nettle coral that stings like a bed of nettles. There were also other dangers. Tropical shallows are full of wild surprises in the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... to quench a country's thirst, And men and dogs shall drink him till they burst. Old Cotta shamed his fortune and his birth, Yet was not Cotta void of wit or worth: What though (the use of barbarous spits forgot) His kitchen vied in coolness with his grot? His court with nettles, moats with cresses stored, With soups unbought and salads blessed his board? If Cotta lived on pulse, it was no more Than Brahmins, saints, and sages did before; To cram the rich was prodigal expense, And who ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... intermixed with ash, one of which I took on board...it has much the likeness of hickory. I found several other woods, some of them light and pretty, and in particular a tree, the leaves of which sting like nettles. This acquired from us ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... eruption in the skin causing a sensation like the stinging of nettles. It may be acute or chronic, frequently caused by ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... a little olive offshoot grows Beneath its orchard elders' shady rows, No budding leaf as yet, no branching limb, Only a rod uprising, virgin-slim— Then if the busy gardener, weeding out Sharp thorns and nettles, cuts the little sprout, It fades and, losing all its living hue, Drops by the mother from whose roots it grew: So was it with my Ursula, my dear; A little space she grew beside us here, Then Death came, breathing pestilence, and she Fell, stricken lifeless, by her parent tree. Persephone, ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... just then. But a tremendous surprise met him. For Don Tiburcio had changed his mind. The rascal was firing in another direction entirely, firing rapturously, firing at his very allies, at the little imps themselves among the boulders and nettles. And the little imps were positively leaping up to be shot. They ran frantically, but straight toward the traitor, and on past him up the trail. The Storm Centre could not shoot lunatics any more than he could babies. He only stared ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... to continue: "I never played," he proceeds, "except by myself, and then only acting over what I had been reading or fancying, or half one, half the other" (a practice common enough, it may be remarked, among boys of by no means morbidly imaginative habit), "cutting down weeds and nettles with a stick, as one of the seven champions of Christendom. Alas! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of the little child, but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a child—never ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... eleven, as I remember having a net when I was at school at Rottingdean. My first exciting capture was a small tortoiseshell, and I was much disappointed when I discovered that it was quite a common insect. In 1917 some nettles here were black with the larvae of this species, but I think they must have been nearly all visited by the ichneumons, which pierce the skin, laying their eggs in the living body of the larva, as the butterflies were not specially common later. I was, however, fortunate ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the sluggard. He said Solomon's description of the slothful should be written in letters of gold on the walls of the understanding. He explained it to them as a metaphor, and made them to understand that the field of the sluggard, overgrown with thorns and nettles, was only an image of the neglected and uncultivated mind. He gave them Doctor Watts' versification of it to commit to memory, and repeated it with them in concert. It is not strange that Mittie, who never came ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... surrounding brakes, and in some places actually interlaced with them, effectually to prevent all suspicion of human neighbourhood. At this moment a slight covering of snow assisted the disguise: and in summer time a thicket of wild cherry trees, woven into a sort of fortification by an undergrowth of nettles, brambles, and thorns, sufficiently protected the spot from the scrutiny ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... Above the arch was a long bas-relief, in hard stone, representing the four seasons, the faces already crumbling away and blackened. This bas-relief was surmounted by a projecting plinth, upon which a variety of chance growths had sprung up,—yellow pellitory, bindweed, convolvuli, nettles, plantain, and even a little cherry-tree, already grown ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... for such a tree, Uncle, and a fearsome danger to the peace of France. Tristan does well to keep the roads safe from such swaggerers. Twelve years of life, twelve years of a pinched stomach, and—the justice of the King to end it all! And what of the woman who gathered nettles for the pot from the river-bank? The archers shouted to her, but she was hungry, poor starved soul, and gathered on, bent to all-fours like a beast. Then they shot her—like a beast. Down she went with an arrow through the ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... southern shore under high projecting cliffs. The French had reported that lead ore was to be found in this place, but on examining the hills, we could discern no appearance of that mineral. Along the river on the south, is a low land covered with rushes, and high nettles, and near the mouths of the creeks, supplied with oak, ash, and walnut timber. On the north the land is rich and well situated. We made seventeen and a half miles this day. The river is falling slowly. We continued our route the next morning early: a small creek called Lead creek, on ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... authoritatively, "not ogle it with a glass;" but a man must follow his own method), impatient to see his back, and especially the top of his head. What a precious frenzy we fall into at such moments! My knees were fairly upon nettles. He flew, and I followed. Once more he was under the glass, but still facing me. How like a vireo he looked! For one instant I thought, Can it be the Philadelphia vireo? But, though I had never seen that bird, I knew its song to be as different as possible from the notes to which I was listening. ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... of this lay a mass of fallen masonry, a long line of grass-grown, weed-encumbered stone, which was evidently the ruin of a wall; here and there in the clearing were similar smaller masses. Rank weed, bramblebush, beds of nettles, encumbered the whole place; it was a scene of ruin and desolation. But a mere glance was sufficient to show me that we had come by accident on ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... me—a thin fellow with a shrivelled mouth, and a back bent two-double. And I heard it on the very hearthstone of the Mayor's cottage, one afternoon, as we sat and smoked in the shadow of the crumbling mud wall, with a square of blue sky for roof, and for carpet a tangle of brambles, nettles, and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nettles picked in the spring make a delicious vegetable, somewhat resembling spinach. They are excellent for sufferers ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... of plants met with here, are common and rough bindweed; night-shade and nettles, both which grow to the size of small trees; a shrubby speedwell, found near all the beaches, sow-thistles, virgin's bower, vanelloe, French willow, euphorbia, and crane's-bill; also cudweed, rushes, bull-rushes, flax, all-heal, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... turn'd to me; "and now," said she, "I'll finish the charm that recovers your strength": When drawing out a leathern ensign of Priapus, she dipt it in a medley of oyl, small pepper, and the bruis'd seed of nettles, paulatim coepit inserere ano meo. Hoc crudelissima anus spurgit subinde umore femina mea. Nasturcii sucum cum abrotano miscet perfusisque inguinibus meis viridis urticae fascem comprehendit, omniaque infra umbilicum coepit lenta mann caedere. Upon which jumping from her, to avoid the sting, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... any thoughtful stranger; so exotic and apart was he—so romantic a grain in a heap of vulgarity—he was as though a striped jasper had crept in among the paving-stones of their marketplace, or a cactus grandiflora shone among the nettles of a ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... weeds and nettles, Lay a violet, half hidden; Hoping that his glance unbidden Yet might fall upon her petals. Though she lived alone, apart, Hope lay nestling at her heart, But, alas! the cruel awaking Set her ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... nettles as of pot-herbs, and entering between a couple of gate-posts, each crowned by the image of a rampant bear, the young soldier at last saw before him, at the end of an avenue, the steep roofs and crow-stepped gable ends of Bradwardine, half dwelling-house, ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... sister must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles; I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower, and a troop of tidy happy villagers please me better than the finest ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... got him in their clutches. In vain Bailly and Lafayette, during a long agony at the Hotel de Ville, attempted to save him; the mob would not be denied. Finally Foulon was seized; he was strung up to a street lantern, and later his {75} head, the mouth stuffed full of hay and nettles, was paraded ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... their stock within, and the watcher surmising that all were housed for the night cautiously made his way down the slope, but on a sudden all three reappeared, and the watcher dropped like a shot rabbit straight into a bed of thistles and nettles, fearful of discovery. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... nothing of Christianity got by idleness. Idleness clothes a man with rags, and the vineyard of the slothful is grown over with nettles. (Prov 23:21, 24:30-32) Profession that is not attended with spiritual labour cannot bring the soul to heaven. The fathers before us were "not slothful in business," but "fervent in spirit, serving ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 'An if we miss to meet him handsomely,— Sweet huntsman, Bassianus 'tis we mean,— Do thou so much as dig the grave for him: Thou know'st our meaning. Look for thy reward Among the nettles at the elder-tree Which overshades the mouth of that same pit Where we decreed to bury Bassianus. Do this, and purchase us thy lasting friends.' O Tamora! was ever heard the like?— This is the pit and this the elder-tree:— Look, sirs, if you can find the huntsman out That should ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... he could not properly enjoy his supper of pate de foi gras and crackers, with pork and beans, plum pudding—eaten as cake—and spiced figs and coffee. That night he turned over on his spring-cot bed as often as if he had been lying on nettles, and when he ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... descry me, To the little Bird that sleeps On the tender spray: nor creeps That hardy worm with pointed tail, But if I be under sail, Flying faster than the wind, Leaving all the clouds behind, But doth hide her tender head In some hollow tree or bed Of seeded Nettles: not a Hare Can be started from his fare, By my footing, nor a wish Is more sudden, nor a fish Can be found with greater ease, Cut the vast unbounded seas, Leaving neither print nor sound, Than I, when nimbly on the ground, I measure many a league an ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... grow only alders, elders, and weeds. Everywhere docks thrust up heads through cracks in the fences to catch at the legs or the skirts of passers-by, while masses of nettles squeeze their way under fences to sting little children. Apropos, the latter are all thin and hungry, in the highest degree quarrelsome, and addicted to prolonged lamentation. Also, each spring sees a certain proportion of their number carried off by diphtheria, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... cart-horse—a most stolid-looking beast, but one which often took most laughably strange fits of friskiness. Once I saw the good cure's watch jump out of his pocket, fly over his head, and disappear amid a heap of nettles, where little Victor found it, and hoped for a rich reward; but he only received an old book of devotion, and a lecture on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... being our native plants. For asthma, he advised the sufferer to "live a fortnight on boiled Carrots only"; for "baldness, to wash the head with a decoction of Boxwood"; [9] for "blood-spitting to drink the juice of Nettles"; for "an open cancer, to take freely of Clivers, or Goosegrass, whilst covering the sore with the bruised leaves of this herb"; and for an ague, to swallow at stated times "six middling pills ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and Laudanum Will Help.—"Take the juice of common nettles inwardly and mix a little laudanum with the juice and rub the parts outwardly. Cancer has often yielded to this treatment." This remedy will no doubt help an ugly looking ulcer, repeatedly taken for cancer, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the girl's inflamed cunt with stinging nettles, which increased her excitement till she seemed mad with erotic delirium, and Mr. Etheridge, to my horror, proposed that we should injure her as a finish to our ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... the blessed Paul." One century later the whole structure had become a heap of ruins. Fra Giocondo da Verona looked in vain for the inscription of Leo I.; he could only find a fragment "lying among the nettles and thorns" (inter orticas et spineta). The same indifference was shown towards the edifices by which the basilica was surrounded. They fell, or ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... ferret long, not among my pampas grass!... (Calling) Olivia!... Oh, that girl's never there. (Wheeling herself furiously towards the kitchen as MRS. TERENCE makes a move to help her) Leave me alone. I don't want to be pushed into the nettles to-day, thank you ... (Shouting loudly as she disappears into the kitchen) Come out of my ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... paintings any longer, I walked into a sort of court, or rather garden, which had been decorated with fountains and antique statues. Their fragments still remain amongst weeds and beds of flowers, for every corner of the place is smothered with vegetation. Here nettles grow thick and rampant: there, tuberoses and jessamine cling around mounds of ruins, which during the elegant reign of the Gonzagas led to grottos and subterranean apartments, concealed from vulgar eyes, and sacred to the most refined enjoyments. I gathered ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... that do spread so wide Up yonder zunny bank's green zide, Do bring to mind what we did do At play wi' dock-leaves years agoo: How we,—when nettles had a-stung Our little hands, when we wer young,— Did rub em wi' a dock, an' zing "Out nettl', in dock. In dock, out sting." An' when your feaece, in zummer's het, Did sheen wi' tricklen draps o' zweat, How you, a-zot bezide the bank, Didst toss your little head, an' pank, An' teaeke a dock-leaf ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... stood the nettles in pride, And, where no fine flowers, there kind weeds dared to wave; It seemed but as yesterday she lay by my side, And now my dog ate of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... free-from-care man in the city; now the little insight he had gained into domestic affairs—the peep behind the curtain given him by my mistaken maiden aunt, had served to embitter his existence, surrounding his path with those nettles of life, household trifles, vulgar cares and petty annoyances. I almost echoed Biddy's ejaculation as the carriage drove from the door with my aunt and her numberless boxes, each one arranged on a new, orderly, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... years thou hast walked after vanity and become vain. Thou wast a keeper of vineyards, but thine own vineyard thou hast not kept; whilst the Eyes of the Eternal run to and fro to see if the vine hath flourished, whether the tender grapes appear, and, lo! all was grown over with thorns; nettles had covered the face thereof. Thou hast grown old and gray, thou hast strayed but not returned.' Yea, I have strayed, but is the gate closed for return? To be a man—only a man—how great that is!" His voice died away, and with it the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... most depressing town I have seen as yet. Except on market and fair days, literally nothing is done. The streets are nearly deserted, the houses are tumbling down, gable-ends without side-walls or roofs are seen everywhere, nettles are growing in the old chimney corners, and the splendid ruins of the ancient abbey are the most cheerful feature of the place. A few melancholy men stand about, the picture of despondent wretchedness, a few sad-eyed ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... in Magendie's Journal de Physiologie Experimentale a paper on a point of physiology connected with the distress of that season. It appears that the inhabitants of six departments, Aix, Jura, Doubs, Haute Saone, Vosges, and Saone-et-Loire, were reduced first to oatmeal and potatoes, and at last to nettles, beanstalks, and other kinds of herbage fit only for cattle; that when the next harvest enabled them to eat barley-bread, many of them died from intemperate indulgence in what they thought an exquisite repast; and that a dropsy of a peculiar description was produced by the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... there, crying, "Twit, twit, twit, my mate is coming,"—but it was not the fir-tree they meant. "Now I shall live," cried the tree, joyfully spreading out its branches; but alas! they were all withered and yellow, and it lay in a corner amongst weeds and nettles. The star of gold paper still stuck in the top of the tree and glittered in the sunshine. In the same courtyard two of the merry children were playing who had danced round the tree at Christmas, and had been so happy. The youngest saw the gilded star, and ran and pulled it off the tree. "Look ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Eleazar Nettles, the worthy host of the Ship-tavern, who Stood at the door of the low rambling building, welcomed his lodger with all the cordiality he could throw into a face originally not ill-looking or unpleasing, but which, in consequence of practising an appearance of mortification, (in order to stand ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... philosophers and their works; 'osophies simply bewildered her; ritual left her cold, psychology troubled her but little, save only in its practical application to the lives of those she loved. But she knew the book of life, with its tragedies and comedies, humour and crass stupidity, nettles and balm from the first chapter to the last, and could prescribe you a remedy to cure your mental hurt just as easily as she could undress your screaming baby, find the criminal pin and re-dress it for you; and every member of every Church and every disciple of every ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... swept past the ranch, leaving Dell on nettles. The importance of the message was urgent, and saddling up a horse, he started up the Beaver in search of Joel and Sargent. They were met returning, near the dead-line, and after listening to the breathless report, the trio gave free rein to their ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... well, well, well, gentlemen, this is somewhat like. Angry men make to themselves beds of nettles, and, when they lie down in them, are uneasy with every body. But I hope you are friends. Let me hear you say you are. I am persuaded, Colonel, that you don't know all this unhappy story. You don't know how desirous my kinsman is, as well as all of us, to have this matter end happily. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... lover of children and of gardens wants Canterbury Bells to ring, Forget-me-nots because they can stand so much watering, and "flowers with faces," pansies, sweet-peas, lupins, snapdragons, monkey flowers, red and white dead nettles, and red clover to bring the bees. Some of these are chosen because the child can do something with them, can find their own uses for them, can play with them. And, speaking generally, playing with them is the child's way of appreciating both plant and animal. Picking feathery grasses, red-tipped ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... taken vp by Sir William, vnder a hedge, in the deepest of Winter, welneere starued with cold, and hunger: hee was of stature meane, of constitution leane, of face freckled, of composition, well proportioned, of diet, naturally, spare, and cleanely inough; yet, at his masters bidding, he would deuoure nettles, thistles, the pith of Artichokes, raw, and liuing birds, and fishies, with their scales, and feathers, burning coles and candles, and whatsoeuer else, howsoeuer vnsauorie, if it might be swallowed: neither this a little, but in such quantitie, as it often bred a second ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... Willow[14] growes aslant a Brooke, [Sidenote: ascaunt the Brooke] That shewes his hore leaues in the glassie streame: [Sidenote: horry leaues] There with fantasticke Garlands did she come,[15] [Sidenote: Therewith | she make] Of Crow-flowers,[16] Nettles, Daysies, and long Purples, That liberall Shepheards giue a grosser name; But our cold Maids doe Dead Mens Fingers call them: [Sidenote: our cull-cold] There on the pendant[17] boughes, her Coronet weeds[18] Clambring to hang;[19] an enuious sliuer ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... drain; break the curd a little with your hand, and put it into a vat with a 2 lb weight upon it; let it stand twelve hours, take it out, and bind a fillet round; turn every day till dry, from one board to another, cover them with nettles or clean dock leaves, and put between two pewter-plates to ripen. If the weather be warm, it will ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... plentifully with griffins. From its flat front shot ostentatiously forth a porch adorned with Roman columns which commanded a near view of the Mouse, and before the porch was a small garden in which several healthy-looking nettles had made ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... that among pupa cases artificially fastened to different objects out of doors, "the elimination was ninety-two per cent on fences where pupae were conspicuous, as against fifty-two per cent among nettles, where they were inconspicuous." This statement is elaborated and commented upon as making a strong point for ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... me with its gloomy thickets and its sombre shadows—with its ravens, its vampires, its serpents, its reptiles, and all its hideous brood of night. I darted among its thorns and crouched amid the leaves, the nettles, and the brambles. The owls hooted at me and the thorns pierced my flesh. 'Go, search and kill,' said everything. The hares sprang from my pathway; the other beasts ran bellowing away; every form of life shrieked in my ears—the curse ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... narrow lanes and insecure footing in deepening gloom to him! Why, he rejoiced in such conditions! He didn't like easy work. He abhorred a bed of roses—not that he had ever tried one, although it is probable that he had often enjoyed a couch of grass, straw, or nettles. Rugged circumstances were his glory. It was as needful for him to encounter such—in his winnowing processes—as it is for the harrow to encounter stones in preparing the cultivated field. Moving quietly but swiftly round ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... footsteps cannot bring him,— then what is to become of poor Monsieur du Miroir? Will he have the fortitude, with my other friends, to take a last look at my pale countenance? Will he walk foremost in the funeral train? Will he come often and haunt around my grave, and weed away the nettles, and plant flowers amid the verdure, and scrape the moss out of the letters of my burial-stone? Will he linger where I have lived, to remind the neglectful world of one who staked much to win a name, but will not then care ...
— Monsieur du Miroir (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her of his sentiments clearly and frequently, both by word and deed. Life, dull gray life, was going to change its hue for her presently, and not long after, she hoped, for Waitstill, too! It needed only a brighter, a more dauntless courage; a little faith that nettles, when firmly grasped, hurt the hand less, and a fairer future would dawn for both of them. The Deacon was a sharper nettle than she had ever meddled with before, but in these days, when the actual contact had not yet occurred, she felt sure ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... reading as disconnected as a dictionary. They were so abrupt. Incidents were noted which stimulated my young imagination like stinging-nettles; and then nothing more. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... open at a picture of seven white swans, "Do you remember this?" he asked. "The seven brothers who were changed to swans, and the good sister who wove a coat for each one out of flax she spun from the churchyard nettles? The magic coats gave them back their human forms. Maybe you can use the same idea, and have your prince changed into ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... all; I have nothing but crusts and nettles!" he exclaimed, with sudden fierce passion. And with a quick movement of his ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... those of the senses, and another life than that of the moment. The difference between us is this, that you forget that the same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains—the horny hand of the peasant feels not the nettles which sting the fine skin of the scholar. You forget also, that whatever widens the sphere of the desires, opens to them also new temptations. Vanity, the desire of applause, pride, the sense of superiority—gnawing discontent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... to itself for a few short years, we realize at once what effect the competition of hardy natives has upon our carefully tended and unstable exotics. In a very brief time the dahlias and phloxes and lilies have all disappeared, and in their place the coarse-growing docks and nettles and thistles have raised their heads aloft to monopolize air and space ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... and where she now lurked grew a thick bed of nettles, which made it impossible to creep thither on her hands and knees. Once more she glanced at the fort Hal seemed to have gone to sleep, and emboldened by that thought she rose to her feet for a swift, silent rush to ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... time. The Doctor gave him chase, and had nearly brought him within arm's length, when the fellow turned at right angles, and sprang clean over a deep dry ditch. The divine, following with equal ardour, and less dexterity, went down over head and ears into a thicket of nettles. Emerging with much discomposure, he proceeded to the village, and roused the constable; but the constable found, on reaching the scene of action, that the dead man was gone, as well ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... of nettles to be found in a neglected corner of the garden, and I quickly applied the remedy, which worked, as the saying is, 'like magic,' for the Grand Panjandrum's Chief Cook's face resumed its normal size at once, and the pain ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... are working hard," he writes to his mother, "at what some can see at a glance the importance of, while to others we appear following after the glory of discovering lakes, mountains, jenny-nettles, and puddock-stools. In reference to these people I always remember a story told me by the late Dr. Philip with great glee. When a young minister in Aberdeen, he visited an old woman in affliction, and began to talk very fair to her on the duty of resignation, trusting, hoping, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie |
